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Gamos in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry

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Gamos in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON DEPARTMENT OF GREEK AND LATIN GAMOS IN ARCHAIC AND CLASSICAL GREEK POETRY THEME, RITUAL AND METAPHOR STYLIANI PAPASTAMATI Thesis submitted to the University College London for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2012 1 I, Styliani Papastamati, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract Marriage is everywhere in Greek poetry of all periods. Yet the poetic use of marriage receives only partial and occasional attention in modern scholarship. The present study seeks to fill this gap in part by examining the use of marriage in archaic and classical Greek poetry from Homer to Menander. My interest inis the ways marriage in its various forms contributes to the thematic concerns and purposes of the poetic genre in which it is employed. Though the focus is not primarily historical, the project is influenced by New Historicism, in that it seeks to explore the use of marriage within the experiential and conceptual frameworks of the first audience(s). It also draws (less markedly) on feminist criticism and on research in archaeology and sociopolitic- al history. Chapter 1 addresses the use of marriage imagery in Pindarpromote tothe acknowledgement of victory and delineate the athlete’s new status in his community. Chapter 2 examines the use of marriage as an ending in Greek drama, both the (often) formalist use in the Euripideandeus ex machina interventions and its climactic use in comedy as a means to encapsulate the comic hero’s success. Marriage as plot ending reaches its peak in New Comedy, where it forms the natural and inevitable resolution of the plot. Chapter 3 deals with the motif of missedgamos in Greek tragedy both to generate pathos and to articulate themes of choice, distortion, and destruction ofoikos and polis. Chapter 4 looks at the way the perversion of marital norms in Aeschylus extends to the gradual destruction ofoikos and expands to thepolis . Chapter 5 is engaged with good gamos. This is to a large extent a poetics of absence, in that ideal 3 marriages in Greek poetry are depicted in the impending or actual separation of the two partners. 4 Contents ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ 8 EDITIONS, TRANSLATIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS ....................................... 12 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 14 1. Preamble ................................................................................................................................................ 14 2. Greek marriage ..................................................................................................................................... 14 a. Definition ........................................................................................................................................... 14 b. Ritual ................................................................................................................................................. 16 c. Ideology ............................................................................................................................................. 20 3. Previous scholarship on marriage and its contexts ............................................................................ 25 a. Historical works ................................................................................................................................ 25 b. Literature .......................................................................................................................................... 26 4. Aim of this thesis ................................................................................................................................... 32 5. Material and methods ........................................................................................................................... 34 CHAPTER 1: GAMOS AND VICTORY IN THE PINDARIC EPINICIAN .......... 39 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 39 2. Marriage as telos ................................................................................................................................... 48 3. Mythologizing gamos: The winning of the bride ............................................................................... 52 4. The public celebration .......................................................................................................................... 64 5. Song ........................................................................................................................................................ 73 6. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 82 CHAPTER 2: GAMOS AS TELOS IN DRAMA ........................................................ 84 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 84 2. Tragedy .................................................................................................................................................. 87 a. The device .......................................................................................................................................... 89 b. Closural position and thematic relevance: marriage, and destruction and irregularities in the oikos ....................................................................................................................................................... 91 c. Remarriage as closure .................................................................................................................... 104 d. Gamos as telos in Sophocles ........................................................................................................... 109 5 3. Comedy ................................................................................................................................................ 115 a. Aristophanic gamos, hieros gamos and the comic genre ............................................................. 116 b. Aristophanic gamos and the creation of utopia: a case of Aristophanic myth-making ............ 128 c. Aristophanic gamos and the victory of the comic poet ................................................................ 133 4. New Comedy and Menander .............................................................................................................. 137 a. Marriage as an element of the plot ................................................................................................ 138 b. Marriage as a metaphor ................................................................................................................ 145 c. Menander in his contexts ............................................................................................................... 148 5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 152 CHAPTER 3: MISSED GAMOS ............................................................................... 154 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 154 2. Enhancement of pathos ....................................................................................................................... 155 3. Prohairesis ............................................................................................................................................ 165 4. Articulating loss: the individual, the oikos and the polis in the case of male lost nuptials ............ 178 5. The language of non-gamos as an expression of distortion and perversion ................................... 186 6. Marriage as microcosm ...................................................................................................................... 193 7. Articulating the missed passage to completion ................................................................................. 201 8. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 207 CHAPTER 4: PERVERTED MARRIAGE IN AESCHYLUS ............................... 209 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 209 2. The Oresteia ......................................................................................................................................... 210 a. Perversion of marriage and the cycle of destruction of the oikos ............................................... 211 b. The case of Clytemnestra: from the destruction of the oikos to the destruction of the polis ... 218 c. Marriage and telos: the closure of the Oresteia ............................................................................ 225 3. The Supplices
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